Hacklab Ghana Developer Census 2020 is the first and most comprehensive survey of people who code in Ghana. In 2020, the Hacklab Foundation fielded a survey covering everything from developers’ favorite technologies to their job preferences. This marks the first of annual surveys to be published. This maiden edition witnessed the participation of 266 developers who took the 20-minute survey earlier between November - December 2020.
Despite our survey’s reach and capacity for informing valuable conclusions, we acknowledge that our results don’t represent everyone in the Ghana developer community evenly. We have further work to do to make the Hacklab Ghana Developer Census 2020 a more inclusive, diverse platform, and a reflection in the community at large.
We are committed to building on steps we have taken and improving the coverage, insights and beyond in the coming years to better improve the support and interventions needed to give developers a more enabling ecosystem to thrive. Some of these survey results directly guide those efforts. To address the characteristics of our data, be sure to check out where we summarize results by developer persona (Professional, Student, Hobbyists) or gender, highlight results for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, or use survey weighting to correct for demographic skew.
We looked at breakdowns by demographics throughout our analysis and its reflection of the distribution of talents.
Want to dive into the results yourself? The anonymized results of the survey are available for download under the Open Database License (ODbL). We look forward to seeing what you find!
This maiden edition could not have been successful without the contributions of Twitter and CorrelAid.
Here are a few of the top takeaways from this year’s results. [add links and a few sentences]
The two biggest subgroups among the respondents are professional developers as well as students. Additionally, there are respondents coding as a part of their work, coding as a hobby, as well as former developers.
Most of the respondents code as a hobby. Interestingly, professional developers seem to code for a hobby less often than students which may be related to their reduced time availability.
Most of the respondents full-time employees. There is also a great share of students. Sadly, there is also a significant share of unemployed developers looking for work.
When it comes to gender differences, there is a greater share of students among the female respondents. In addition, women seem to be self-employed less often when compared with men.
Most respondents come from the greater Accra region. However, the extent of concentration in Accra seems to be larger for professional developers than for students.
Zoom in to get a more detailed picture.
Hover over the individual markers to see the professional status of the respondents.
Most respondents are between 20 and 30 years old.
While the students are very young in most cases, the professional developers display a little more variance in their ages. However, we have a very young sample at hand.
There is a greater share of women among the students than among the professional developers.
Ghana’s developer community may become more representative in the upcoming years.
Among our respondents, women seem to have dependents they care for less often than men do. This may partly be due to the fact, that more women are still in their studies and that the women in our sample may be younger than the men.
These are the technologies with which the respondents have done extensive development work in over the past year.
HTML/CSS is the most used language, followed by JavaScript, Python and SQL. Professional developers are more likely to use JavaScript and SQL. C++ and C are still widely used to teach coding to students.
A comment here…
React.js is the most popular web framework.
Node.js is also a popular back-end environment.
GitHub is by far the most popular version control tool. Slack is the most used business communication platform.
These are the technologies that the respondents are currently not using but want to work in over the next year.
TypeScript, followed by Python and Swift are the technologies that professional developers do not use but want to learn. Students are interested in “the classics”: Python, SQ, and JavaScript.
Respondents want to learn working with cloud platforms, in particular AWS for the professional developers and Microsoft Azure for the students. Almost 20% of professional developers indicated wanting to learn Docker. iOS is the mobile developing system that most want to work with nextt year.
If React.js was the most popular web framework, it seems that Django and Vue.js are attractive.
A quarter of the respondents indicated wanting to work with Flutter next year. Many also want to work with React Native and Node.js.
Microsoft Azure and Stack Overflow for Teams are tools who might become more popular. Many students also indicate wanting to learn GitHub.
Windows in the most used operating system. Professional developers use MacOS and Linux more often than other respondents. Students are overwhelmingly on Windows.
MacOS, Linux and Windows are practically tied as preferred systems. Professional developers have a preference for MacOS, then Linux. Students prefer Windows.
Unsurprisingly, professional developers are more likely to have influence over new technology purchases.
Most of the respondents declared relying on free trials and colleagues.
Most of the survey participants have at least a secondary high-school degree whereas half of the students have a secondary high school degree and every third professional developer has a bachelor’s degree
Most participants study or studied Computer Science or Computer Engineering, followed by Information Technology and other Engineering fields as well as Mathematics/Statistics and Business.
Half of the respondents find a formal education very or even critically important for their career.
## change_edu_21
## 1 Approach to learning
## 2 Business or graphic design
## 3 change my school
## 4 Combination of modules I select for the course
## 5 Curriculum
## 6 field of study
## 7 How I learned programming
## 8 How the courses are taught
## 9 I'd probably have studied general arts in senior high, then turned the Computer Science department ict labs into my playground in University.
## 10 I'll do electronic and electrical engineering instead of computer science
## 11 I will change the course I chose.
## 12 I woud have added something else to my studies
## 13 I woud not go to university
## 14 I would change my programme of study to computer science, or software engineering.
## 15 I would select information technology
## 16 I would study Computer Science
## 17 In the university at the moment
## 18 learn more independently
## 19 learn programming earlier
## 20 Master degree
## 21 Material engineering
## 22 More Focus on Mathematics
## 23 more practical work
## 24 My choice of course in high school because i was a visual arts student
## 25 My Choice of university of study
## 26 My Education
## 27 My final year elective courses
## 28 My tertiary institution
## 29 Nothing
## 30 Tech entrepreneurship should be a course to understand the business of tech.
## 31 The business course in secondary school
## 32 The learning platforms used
## 33 The non practical aspects of studies
## 34 The program of study. I would probably take a computer science course
## 35 Will advocate for modern trends to be taught
## 36 Would do computer engineering
## 37 Yes
## n perc perc_label
## 1 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 2 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 3 3 0.021582734 2.2%
## 4 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 5 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 6 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 7 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 8 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 9 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 10 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 11 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 12 7 0.050359712 5%
## 13 4 0.028776978 2.9%
## 14 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 15 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 16 12 0.086330935 8.6%
## 17 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 18 6 0.043165468 4.3%
## 19 6 0.043165468 4.3%
## 20 3 0.021582734 2.2%
## 21 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 22 7 0.050359712 5%
## 23 6 0.043165468 4.3%
## 24 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 25 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 26 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 27 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 28 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 29 52 0.374100719 37.4%
## 30 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 31 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 32 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 33 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 34 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 35 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 36 1 0.007194245 0.7%
## 37 7 0.050359712 5%A little bit than more of 50% of the respondents are slightly satisfied or satisfied with their current jobs. Whereas 20% are slightly dissatisfied or dissatisfied.
Interestingly, people who work more than 3 times a week overtime are satisfied with their job. There seems no relationship that the more overtime the less job satisfaction. The tendency is rather the opposite.
Half of the respondents work in a small company with less than 10 workers. Only 10% of the respondents work in a big company with more than 100 workers.
Working hours are quite evenly scattered across the scale from 0-80 hours a week.
Around 50% of the respondents work overtime on 3 or more days in a week.
## Warning: Removed 13 rows containing missing values (geom_interactive_point).
50% of the respondents earn less than 2000 GHS per month.
The student respondents don’t earn more than 2000 GHS but do work in various sizes of companies. Professional Developers earn more salary and the most developers work in companies with less than 100 employees.There seems no clear relationship between the company size and the salary.
## Warning: Removed 15 rows containing missing values (geom_interactive_point).## Warning: Removed 32 rows containing missing values (geom_interactive_point).A Bachelor’s degree is associated with broad range of salary options. There are respondents With a Bachelors degree who receieve salaries as high as respondents with Master’s degree. However, people with a Master’s degree tend to have higher salaries than others on average.
## Warning: Removed 17 rows containing missing values (geom_interactive_point).60% of the respondents are open for new job opportunities and one in three respondents is even actively looking for a job.
The main reason for developers is more income whereas for students it is gaining more experience and skills improvement.
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The most popular method to find out more about a company among the respondents is researching company media. There also seem no differences between developers and students.
2 in 3 respondents are members of a developer community.
The three largest communities to which respondents indicated membership were DevCongress (13.6%), Facebook Developer Circle (9.6%), and the Hacklab Foundation (7.4%).
The Hacklab Foundation is an international nonprofit organization headquartered in Ghana with a focus on preparing the youth for future digital jobs through technology education and skills development. We achieve this through bootcamps, hackathons, mentorship and coaching, internships, digital skills training, and job placement.
Since our inception in 2015, we have directly impacted over 10,000 people, organized hackathons, robotics, and coding bootcamps for kids between the ages of 7yrs - 13yrs supported 500+ women in tech, 300+ youth were placed in jobs and 250+ youth were placed in internships. Through our partnership with IBM, we launched the Ghana National Digital Skills Training Program in November 2018, with a goal to reach 100,000 people by 2021.
The Hacklab Foundation believes that creating an equal platform for everyone, irrespective of race, gender, social class, and physical limitations will allow for a fair chance to compete for the same opportunity. This has been at the core of our initiatives.
Visit Us: hacklabfoundation.org